Apple falls to number three global smartphone manufacturer globally

AppleInsider · July 15, 2021 5:52PM

Xiaomi has become the second-largest smartphone manufacturer in the world for the first time during the second quarter of 2021, displacing Apple for the number two spot behind Samsung.

Credit: Xiaomi

Xiaomi had a 17% share of the market in Q2 2021, behind Samsung's 19% share and ahead of Apple's 14% share. Xiaomi also saw the highest growth, with research firm Canalys estimating that the manufacturer grew 83% year-over-year. Oppo and Vivo took the fourth and fifth positions in the global smartphone maker list, each with a 10% share of the market.

Apple only saw 1% annual growth in the second quarter of 2021, while Samsung clocked in with 15% annual growth. Oppo grew 28% annually, while Vivo grew 27%.

"Xiaomi is growing its overseas business rapidly. For example, its shipments increased more than 300% in Latin America, 150% Africa and 50% in Western Europe. And as it grows, it evolves. It is now transforming its business model from challenger to incumbent, with initiatives such as channel partner consolidation and more careful management of older stock in the open market," said Ben Stanton, research manager at Canalys.

Compared to Apple and Samsung, Xiaomi still produces smartphones that are skewed toward the low-end and midrange. Its average selling price (ASP) is 40% lower than Samsung and 75% lower than Apple, the research firm estimates.

"So a major priority for Xiaomi this year is to grow sales of its high-end devices, such as the Mi 11 Ultra," Stanton said. "But it will be a tough battle, with Oppo and Vivo sharing the same objective, and both willing to spend big on above-the-line marketing to build their brands in a way that Xiaomi is not."

These results are preliminary, and Canalys has yet to release firm smartphone shipment numbers for the second quarter as of Thursday. In Q1 2021, global smartphone shipments totaled 347 million units with Apple in second place.

Canalys notes that all smartphone vendors are fighting to secure critical components amid global supply shortages. However, analysts at JP Morgan indicate that Apple is feeling little to no impact by the supply issues when compared to its Android-making counterparts.

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retrogusto · July 15, 2021 5:53PM

Darn, there goes the monopoly theory.

mark fearing · July 15, 2021 5:57PM

So will the 'monopoly' cry babies shut-up now? You know the horrible monopoly that any company that is the third highest selling device maker is responsible for...so?

pairof9 · July 15, 2021 6:16PM

"This is the end...my only friend, the end" – J. Morrison

mike1 · July 15, 2021 6:27PM

Assuming for a moment this is correct, if Samsung, Xiaomi and Apple collectively account for 50% of the business, and Oppo and Vivo(?) cover another 20%, how many players are there with less than 10% share???

archstanton · July 15, 2021 7:07PM

mark fearing said:

So will the 'monopoly' cry babies shut-up now? You know the horrible monopoly that any company that is the third highest selling device maker is responsible for...so?

Apple could have one percent and they wouldn’t shut up.

Half of them are trolls and plants, the other half is raged anti Apple. One hell of an unsavory mix.

flydog · July 15, 2021 7:25PM

retrogusto said:

Darn, there goes the monopoly theory.

Not aware of anyone ever alleging that Apple has a monopoly in smartphones.

beats · July 15, 2021 7:32PM

Apple should never drop to #3 as the producer of the original iPhone. Yes I know Samsung gives away TVs with purchase and other companies sell 100 bucks iKnockoffs with buy one get one deals on top but still, Apple needs iPod market share numbers across all categories.

daalseth · July 15, 2021 8:35PM

flydog said:

retrogusto said:

Darn, there goes the monopoly theory.

Not aware of anyone ever alleging that Apple has a monopoly in smartphones.

I have. the trouble is that most of these people don’t know what Monopoly, means. They don’t understand that there is a definition that must be met, and that the company must be shown to not only meet that definition, but also be abusing its power.

Blaming Apple for monopoly behavior has become a meaningless tag line. Anyone with an axe to grind tosses it into the press release. What they don’;t understand is that they sound like idiots.

flydog · July 15, 2021 8:58PM

DAalseth said:

flydog said:

retrogusto said:

Darn, there goes the monopoly theory.

Not aware of anyone ever alleging that Apple has a monopoly in smartphones.

I have.

Who?

fastasleep · July 15, 2021 9:06PM

Beats said:

Apple should never drop to #3 as the producer of the original iPhone.

Yet, they did.

elijahg · July 15, 2021 9:17PM

Beats said:

Apple should never drop to #3 as the producer of the original iPhone. Yes I know Samsung gives away TVs with purchase and other companies sell 100 bucks iKnockoffs with buy one get one deals on top but still, Apple needs iPod market share numbers across all categories.

I agree that marketshare is important. Marketshare means websites and apps are developed with iOS in mind, rather than Android coming first with iOS support an afterthought. This is especially important with Macs losing Boot Camp/x86 Windows virtualisation, if a particular program is essential for a person's work, they have two choices: get a Mac and a PC, or just get a PC. The most common outcome in this scenario is definitely not favourable for Apple. If Mac marketshare is significant, then previously Windows-only programs get ported to Mac. When there's a bump in Mac marketshare this usually causes a flurry of ports, as it did back in the G3 iMac days, then the early days of the Intel switch.

Cook apparently doesn't understand/care about this, since his primary motivation is maximum profit. If he did, he would have dropped the prices of the new iMacs now that they are saving $$$ per machine in primarily Intel silicon. Plenty of people here claim the same though their opinion really holds no weight with me as they'd agree with Cook if he was to shut Apple down tomorrow.

crowley · July 15, 2021 9:24PM

DAalseth said:

flydog said:

retrogusto said:

Darn, there goes the monopoly theory.

Not aware of anyone ever alleging that Apple has a monopoly in smartphones.

I have. the trouble is that most of these people don’t know what Monopoly, means. They don’t understand that there is a definition that must be met, and that the company must be shown to not only meet that definition, but also be abusing its power.

You don't have to be abusing power to be a monopoly, and you don't have to be a monopoly to engage in anti-competitive behaviour. Are you sure that you know what a monopoly is?

daalseth · July 15, 2021 11:39PM

flydog said:

DAalseth said:

flydog said:

retrogusto said:

Darn, there goes the monopoly theory.

Not aware of anyone ever alleging that Apple has a monopoly in smartphones.

I have.

Who?

There was a story a while back, several years, where someone was claiming that Apple had a monopoly on phones that ran iOS and they should be forced to license it to other companies. I don’t believe it ever reached the level of a lawsuit, or if it did it was squashed fairly quickly.

entropys · July 16, 2021 9:10AM

crowley said:

DAalseth said:

flydog said:

retrogusto said:

Darn, there goes the monopoly theory.

Not aware of anyone ever alleging that Apple has a monopoly in smartphones.

SI have. the trouble is that most of these people don’t know what Monopoly, means. They don’t understand that there is a definition that must be met, and that the company must be shown to not only meet that definition, but also be abusing its power.

You don't have to be abusing power to be a monopoly, and you don't have to be a monopoly to engage in anti-competitive behaviour. Are you sure that you know what a monopoly is?

Those kinds of monopoly’s (eg utilities tend to be so) aren’t the problem. In any case, on,y the ignorant would Claim Apple in any of its endeavours is A monopoly.

In this case if Apple cared about market share instead of margins it would just drop the price, that it hadn’t gives you the answer,

archstanton · July 16, 2021 10:05AM

crowley said:

DAalseth said:

flydog said:

retrogusto said:

Darn, there goes the monopoly theory.

Not aware of anyone ever alleging that Apple has a monopoly in smartphones.

I have. the trouble is that most of these people don’t know what Monopoly, means. They don’t understand that there is a definition that must be met, and that the company must be shown to not only meet that definition, but also be abusing its power.

You don't have to be abusing power to be a monopoly, and you don't have to be a monopoly to engage in anti-competitive behaviour. Are you sure that you know what a monopoly is?

I’m sure I know a lot more on the subject than someone who bases their “monopoly” prognosis on how much they hate Apple. Your hooked on phonics thought level aside, duopoly would be the only thing that could remotely be argued. No serious person considers Apple to have prevailing control over the smartphone market, tablet market, PC market, app market, music streaming market, watch market on and on. Well I should say no serious person outside of loudmouth YouTube & media clickbait dolts as well as the small slice of you disturbed internet posters (that are unfortunately found on every corner of the internet) would use the Sherman act word monopoly for a company that doesn’t have prevailing control of a market price. Now you will argue that Apple has price control over the things Apple sells. You’ll embarrass yourself with this argument but I suspect that is something you’re accustomed to.

Now you could argue that Apple has engaged in what I’ll loosely call anti competitive acts to gain an unfair market advantage over another, typically smaller company. This would not be a monopoly case. As well it would be very high legal bar to meet. All but the proverbial smoking gun is needed to prove this, so you would be wrong on that too. But at least you would be using actually applicable legal terms. Yet ultimately being wrong is something I suspect you are very accustomed to also.

archstanton · July 16, 2021 10:05AM

DAalseth said:

flydog said:

DAalseth said:

flydog said:

retrogusto said:

Darn, there goes the monopoly theory.

Not aware of anyone ever alleging that Apple has a monopoly in smartphones.

I have.

Who?

There was a story a while back, several years, where someone was claiming that Apple had a monopoly on phones that ran iOS and they should be forced to license it to other companies. I don’t believe it ever reached the level of a lawsuit, or if it did it was squashed fairly quickly.

There’s a hundred stories about every large corporation and the lawsuits that try to extract money from them as well as the insta-fame seekers who bring them. Hot air packaged in HTML5.

No serious person believes the Sherman act could apply to a company’s OS offering in a competitive consumer sector. That’s absurd and only dimwit clickbait media would argue it.

It is about pricing power and specific actions that run counter to improved competitive product offerings (ad ridiculum— new company B was going to offer a better product and only had one bridge available to deliver the product to market. so company A bought the bridge and wouldn’t let company A’s trucks pass).

The anti Apple Internet posters using the word monopoly is unfortunately the continued dumbing down of the internet with a shut out to evidence of continued degradation of the gene pool.

igorsky · July 16, 2021 1:53PM

I hear Porsche is freaking out that Toyota sells more cars.

flydog · July 16, 2021 4:03PM

DAalseth said:

flydog said:

DAalseth said:

flydog said:

retrogusto said:

Darn, there goes the monopoly theory.

Not aware of anyone ever alleging that Apple has a monopoly in smartphones.

I have.

Who?

There was a story a while back, several years, where someone was claiming that Apple had a monopoly on phones that ran iOS and they should be forced to license it to other companies. I don’t believe it ever reached the level of a lawsuit, or if it did it was squashed fairly quickly.

This story is about smartphone market share, as in all smartphones, not market share of "phones that run iOS." No one has ever claimed that Apple has a monopoly in smartphones, which is obviously not true.

edited July 2021

flydog · July 16, 2021 4:06PM

crowley said:

DAalseth said:

flydog said:

retrogusto said:

Darn, there goes the monopoly theory.

Not aware of anyone ever alleging that Apple has a monopoly in smartphones.

I have. the trouble is that most of these people don’t know what Monopoly, means. They don’t understand that there is a definition that must be met, and that the company must be shown to not only meet that definition, but also be abusing its power.

You don't have to be abusing power to be a monopoly, and you don't have to be a monopoly to engage in anti-competitive behaviour. Are you sure that you know what a monopoly is?

Seems like it is you who needs to learn what a monopoly is. His point is that monopolies per se are not illegal. It is what you do with a monopoly that may or may not be illegal.

crowley · July 16, 2021 4:35PM

flydog said:

crowley said:

DAalseth said:

flydog said:

retrogusto said:

Darn, there goes the monopoly theory.

Not aware of anyone ever alleging that Apple has a monopoly in smartphones.

I have. the trouble is that most of these people don’t know what Monopoly, means. They don’t understand that there is a definition that must be met, and that the company must be shown to not only meet that definition, but also be abusing its power.

You don't have to be abusing power to be a monopoly, and you don't have to be a monopoly to engage in anti-competitive behaviour. Are you sure that you know what a monopoly is?

Seems like it is you who needs to learn what a monopoly is. His point is that monopolies per se are not illegal. It is what you do with a monopoly that may or may not be illegal.

I didn't say anything contrary to that? What I added is that you don't have to be a monopoly to act anti-competitively. Which is true.

Apple falls to number three global smartphone manufacturer globally

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